On Sunday 03 October 2010 08:06 PM, jtd wrote:

On Sunday 03 October 2010 20:01:46 Rony wrote:

...

Hello,

I had to draw a map for someone and required to use the straight line tool. I found to my dismay that GIMP (2.6.8) does not have a straight line drawing tool. How can the developers forget such a basic thing? I had to download tuxpaint for the job and it did just that.

you need the xfig plugin to draw geometric shapes.

This is a basic feature. It should have been included. Anyway I will download the plugin.

On Sunday 03 October 2010 08:21 PM, Easwar Hariharan wrote:

I searched Synaptic on Ubuntu and found xfig as a separate program and not as a plugin to GIMP. Turns out the plugin is called Gfig and is part of the standard GIMP distribution since 1998. It is accessed by Filters>>Render>>Gfig

Easwar, thanks for the tip. I tried it out and it works.

Using which tool? In Gimp 2.6.8 in Ubuntu 10.04, I don't see any tool which I could use for drawing lines unless I open GFig.

the answer is snip from <<Yohan Pereira>> reply

" actually its not so obvious but select any drawing tool (like paint brush or pencil). click (and release) at the place you want to start the point, then hold shift and click on the desired end position .... tada!!! "

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 8:36 PM, Yohan Pereira yohan.pereira@gmail.com wrote:

actually its not so obvious but select any drawing tool (like paint brush or pencil). click (and release) at the place you want to start the point, then hold shift and click on the desired end position .... tada!!!

OK. That worked. And with the right brush size, I could get a line of desired thickness.

Hi Rony,

On 10/03/2010 08:53 PM, Rony wrote:

On Sunday 03 October 2010 08:36 PM, Yohan Pereira wrote:

...

On Sunday 03 October 2010 8:01:46 pm Rony wrote:

...

I found to my dismay that GIMP (2.6.8) does not have a straight line drawing tool.

actually its not so obvious but select any drawing tool (like paint brush or pencil). click (and release) at the place you want to start the point, then hold shift and click on the desired end position .... tada!!!

Thanks Yohan, this is great too.

Although you got your answer, I should point out something. From the GIMP FAQ (the very first question, in fact !) ( http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html ):

""" ...It is a raster editor, which means that it performs operations directly on the pixels that make up the image, and not a vector editor. Other (proprietary) raster editors include Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paintshop Pro and the humble Microsoft Paint. .... """

Drawing a straight line is not a 'simple' thing in raster graphics. Think of vector graphics as drawing technical diagrams with scales, compass, D ..etc and raster as painting. Or most accurately, if you need to draw lines, circles, flowcharts, boxes etc which are based on simple (2D) mathematical equations, you need a vector graphics application. Whereas if you want to touch up a photograph or edit a wallpaper (which work on individual pixels) you need a raster graphics application.

If you need vector graphics applications in linux, use xfig, dia, tuxpaint etc. If you need raster use gimp.

Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics

cheers, - steve

On 10/04/2010 12:23 AM, Yohan Pereira wrote:

On Monday 04 October 2010 12:14:51 am steve wrote:

...

If you need vector graphics applications in linux, use xfig, dia, tuxpaint etc.

not to forget one of the main open source contenders inkscape. Also karbon (k office suite) is coming along pretty well.

Inkscape, of course ! Thanks for pointing that out. How could I forget ? Maybe because that is more of a 'professional' vector drawing app. unlike the others which are more like productivity tools. Like the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words -- raster vs vector:

http://www.gimp.org/screenshots/ http://inkscape.org/screenshots/index.php?lang=en

cheers, - steve

On Monday 04 October 2010 07:27 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

On Sun, 2010-10-03 at 20:01 +0530, Rony wrote:

...

I had to draw a map for someone and required to use the straight line tool. I found to my dismay that GIMP (2.6.8) does not have a straight line drawing tool. How can the developers forget such a basic thing? I had to download tuxpaint for the job and it did just that.

inkscape is there - GIMP is an image manipulating program. 'nix philosophy is 'many small apps each aimed at one thing and does it well, rather than one big app that claims to do many things - and usually does most of them badly'

I just wanted to make a small road map for a particular place to send to a friend and needed a simple editor to draw straight and diagonal lines. All major image (pixel) editors have line drawing features via a line tool. In GIMP it turns out to be a hidden function thats all.

On Monday 04 October 2010 11:25 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

do not use GIMP to draw road maps. It is like the guy who was using microsoft word to write C programs and wondering why they would not compile.

Ok.

On Monday 04 October 2010 07:44 AM, Raj Mathur (राज माथुर) wrote:

On Sunday 03 Oct 2010, Rony wrote:

...

I had to draw a map for someone and required to use the straight line tool. I found to my dismay that GIMP (2.6.8) does not have a straight line drawing tool. How can the developers forget such a basic thing? I had to download tuxpaint for the job and it did just that.

Not directly answering your question, but I prefer OpenOffice Impress or Draw to draw vector diagrams. Impress, specially, works great with shapes, lines and arrows.

Before downloading tuxpaint, I tried OOo-Draw and drew lines but could not find the eraser to make corrections. :P Maybe it is hidden somewhere.

On Monday 04 October 2010 07:14 PM, Raj Mathur (राज माथुर) wrote:

On Monday 04 Oct 2010, Rony wrote:

...

Before downloading tuxpaint, I tried OOo-Draw and drew lines but could not find the eraser to make corrections. :P Maybe it is hidden somewhere.

Er, you don't need an eraser in a vector drawing program -- just select the object you don't want, and press Delete.

Or was that meant to be a joke?

LOL! No joke. I wanted to erase some line overshoots and could not do so. You know, around corners, junctions etc.